Braintree Betas Bitcoin For U.S. Merchants

Soon it may be possible to pay in Bitcoin from any merchant that uses Braintree.

The service already allows participating merchants to support payments from credit and debit cards, PayPal, Venmo, and Apple Pay. Now, thanks to Braintree’s partnership with Bitcoin storage provider Coinbase, U.S. merchants can join a private beta to accept Bitcoin, too, Braintree announced Thursday.

In order to join the private beta, merchants must opt in to the program by inserting a few lines of code to its latest payments platform, the v.zero SDK. Braintree is not announcing any participating merchants yet, a spokesperson told ReadWrite, but merchants can start using the program as early as Thursday.

The price of a single Bitcoin may be falling, but merchants’ faith in the currency is strong. Though a Bitcoin was worth more than $1000 last January and less than $250 today, users are spending, trading, and investing the cryptocurrency at an increased pace. This is why Bitcoin functionality may be desirable for many of Braintree’s merchants, including Uber, Open Table and Hotel Tonight.

“Bitcoin is growing in popularity for consumer and merchants alike,” wrote Aunkur Arya, Braintree’s general manager of mobile. “We’ve partnered with Coinbase to make it easy and secure for merchants to accept Bitcoin and for consumers to pay via Bitcoin.”